Shalosh

Introduction

Shalosh is a card-shedding game for to 2 to 8 players. Playing style is reminiscent of UNO, but played with one or more traditional decks of cards. There are no Jokers in Shalosh, so each deck is 52 cards.

Also Known As

Some people may also know Shalosh by the rather unglamorous name of Shithead.

House Rules

Most K.R. Engineering games have a variety of options or "house rules" that can be turned on and off by the game owner to change how the game plays. These options can include changing the winning criteria for a game, adding new rules or disabling other rules, or just placing time limits on how long you can be away before the game skips you. It is often helpful to know what house rules you are playing with when you sit down at a game. To that end, you can touch the game logo on any K.R. Engineering game to see a list of which options are enabled and which are not.

For owners/administrators wishing to change these options, please see the ADMINISTRATION section.

Getting Started

If you are new to owning a K.R. Engineering game or have upgraded from an older game version, then this is the section for you! Here we will try to address some common stumbling blocks that people encounter when they're new.

Where is my game?

If you just purchased a new game, you may be wondering where the actual game is. Our new system uses a rezzer, and the games are all inside the rezzer! You should find the item in your inventory that is called "K.R. Engineering Game System" and rez that into the world. Once you've got that, simply click and hold your mouse button on it for a few seconds, and a menu should appear. Choose "Games" and select the game you want to play. For more information, see the Game Rezzer System section.

Why does my game say it does not have a license?

If you have activated a game on your rezzer and it will not play because of a lack of license, then there are a couple possibilities.

You may not own a license for that game! Game rezzer systems come with all K.R. Engineering Games, but they do not include a license for all games! You only have licenses that you have purchased from the K.R. Engineering store. If you purchase Greedy Greedy for example, it will come with a game rezzer system that includes all other games, but you will only be able to play Greedy Greedy until you purchase additional licenses.

If you are sure you own a license, then you may have improperly shutdown a previous copy of the game, or left a copy of the game loaded somewhere else in Second Life. A license only allows you to run 1 copy of that game at any time. If you want to run more copies, you need to own multiple licenses for the same game. In either of these cases, you can still play your game by touching the Gaming.SL Logo on the table, and choosing "G.SL Force." This will tell the server that you wish to use your license on THIS copy of the game, even if it is already in use elsewhere! If you do this, any copy of the game elsewhere in Second Life that was using that license will cease to be playable as the license is taken away and given to the new copy of the game.

Can I use my license with other rezzers?

Yes! Your game licenses can be used on any K.R. Engineering game rezzer system that you purchase from our store. There are many styles to choose from and more added on a regular basis! The game comes with a standard table to play on, but you can purchase other rezzer systems to use as well.

Will my license work on rezzers owned by other people?

No. Your license will only work on your own rezzers. You cannot transfer or otherwise use your license on a rezzer ("Game System") not owned by you.

Joining The Game

Most K.R. Engineering games can be played simply by right-clicking on a chair and choosing "Play."

K.R. Engineering games can be played on a variety of themed furniture objects, and the "chairs" may not always look like chairs. For example, on the Chess theme, the "chairs" are the giant chess pieces. If you are unsure what is a chair and what isn't on a particular, that's okay! You can right-click and select 'Play' on any part of a theme and it will automatically place you in an available chair, even if you didn't click on a chair specifically.

Important: K.R. Engineering games use a rezzing system. This means that the GAME (buttons, dice, cards, game boards, etc) is a separate object from the furniture/rezzer/theme. You must right-click on the THEME to play, not the game itself, as you cannot sit on the game pieces (such as dice, game boards, cards, etc). You must sit on the furniture around the game to play, not the game pieces.

While MOST game themes are furniture that you can sit on, there may be some exceptions. The Pocket theme for example cannot be sat on, as it has no chairs. Instead, you can join a game on a Pocket theme by clicking the MENU button on the game.

Game Play

Important: To play Shalosh, you must be wearing the Shalosh HUD. To get a HUD, press the 'HUD' button on the table. You will be given an object called Shalosh Game HUD. Find this under your Objects folder and wear it.

Shalosh is the Hebrew word for 'three.' While playing, each player has three face down cards in front of them, three face up cards in front of them, and three cards in their hand (ideally). To begin playing, players must sit at the table and press the Start button once all players are seated. Once the game has been started, no new players may join the game.

The player who starts the game is given the opportunity to select the number of card decks that will be used for the duration of the game. The more card decks that are used (up to a maximum of 4 decks, 208 cards), the longer the game will take to finish. If there are 2 to 4 players, then a minimum of 1 deck must be used. If there are 5 to 8 players, then a minimum of 2 decks must be used.

Once the number of decks have been chosen, the game begins. The game will automatically shuffle and deal cards to each player. Each player will receive 3 face down cards on the table in front of them, followed by 6 cards in their 'hand.' Once all of the cards have been dealt, players must then choose three of the six cards in their hands to lay down on the table in front of them, face up. The cards you choose to lay face up can drastically effect your ability to play in the final stages of the game (see below).

Once all players have laid down their three face up cards, then play begins. The player whose turn it is must choose 1 or more cards to lay down on the discard pile. The rules for discarding are:

Trump cards may be played on top of any other card, except an identical trump (i.e. you can't play a 3 on top of a 3). The trump cards are:

Twos: A 2 may be placed down to 'reset' the discard pile back to 2, the lowest value card.

Threes: A 3 may be played as a trump card, but it has no effect. It is transparent. This means that the next player whose turn it is must play according to the card below the 3, not on the 3 itself.

Sevens: A 7 may be played to invert the discard order. (See additional rules below.)

Tens: A 10 may be played to 'close' the discard pile. When a 10 is played, all cards on the discard pile are removed from the game and the player who played the 10 must follow it by laying down a new card to begin the discard pile anew. Since the entire discard pile is removed at this point, players may follow up a 10 with another 10, because the second ten will be played on an empty pile, not on top of the first 10.

The standard rule of play is that you must play a card that is HIGHER than the top-most card on the discard pile.

Exception: If the top card is a 3, you must play according to the card underneath it.

Exception: If the top card (or the card under a 3) is a 7, you must play a card LOWER than 7 instead of higher.

If you have multiples of a given card type (i.e. two Queens, of any suit), then you may play them simultaneously.

Exception: You may not play multiples of trump cards (2s, 3s, 7s or 10s).

Aces are high, that means they outrank Kings. They are not ones.

The suit of the cards is meaningless, there are no restrictions on what suits can be played on top of others.

After every play, players must draw from the card stack until they have AT LEAST 3 cards in their hand. If you have 3 or more cards already, you do not draw any additional cards.

Once the draw pile has been exhausted, players will then naturally run out of cards in their hands. Once a player has discarded all of the cards in their hand, they may start playing cards from the FACE UP cards in front of them. By clicking on a card on the table, it will be moved to your hand where you can play it, if it is playable on the current top-most card. Once a player has used up all of their face up cards, and has no cards in their hand, they may begin to play from their face down cards. These are purposely mysterious, you do not know what any of these cards are until you pick one.

The game is won once a player has completely run out of cards. They must have no cards in their hand and no cards on the table, either face up or face down.

If at any time a player is unable to make a play, they must pick up ALL of the cards in the discard pile by clicking on the discard pile. Since the objective of the game is to run out of cards, this can be very disadvantageous during the late half of the game. It is not necessarily a disadvantage early on in the game, as everyone else must draw from the stack of cards, and you don't have to until you 'catch up' with them by discarding back down to three cards.

Card Matching Rule

The game may optionally have a house rule enabled that allows players to discard an identical card as is on top of the discard pile or greater, rather than just greater. With the option enabled, you can, for example, discard a Queen/King/Ace/Trump on top of another Queen. If the option is disabled, which is the default, you may only discard King/Ace/Trump on top of a Queen.

You may not discard a duplicate trump on top of the same trump card (2, 3, 7 or 10), even with this option enabled (i.e. you can't play a 7 on another 7.).

See the Administration section for information on enabling/disabling this option.

Game Rezzer System

Overview

The latest versions of K.R. Engineering games use an on-demand rezzing system for playing. Rather than rezzing a game directly, you rez one or more themed game rezzers. These themed game rezzers may be tables, hot tubs, or any other mesh furniture objects that are capable of rezzing games.

All game licenses come with a free copy of the standard game rezzer system, a wooden Octagon-shaped gaming table. It is not necessary to purchase any additional rezzers, but many are available if you wish to have a different piece of furniture to play your games upon.

To use a themed rezzer you must own a license for each game you wish to play. For example, if you wish to play Greedy Greedy then you must purchase a Greedy Greedy license. A license grants you the right to have 1 copy of Greedy Greedy rezzed and in use at any given time, on any compatible rezzer, at any location. If you wish to play Greedy Greedy at another location, you can shut down the running version of Greedy and then run it at another location. Since the license transfers in this case, all scores, addons, settings, and other features of the previous game transfer with it.

If you wish to run more than 1 copy of the same game at the same time, you are able to purchase additional licenses. For example, 2 licenses allows you to have 2 of the game running at the same time.

Both the themed game rezzers and the games themselves are copyable, so it is not a big deal if you delete them. Games that are deleted rather than shut down properly will not save their settings, but you will not lose your license or the game. Licenses that were improperly shut down will automatically unload after 1 hour. You can also force a license reload sooner than an hour if you wish by loading a new instance of the same game on a rezzer.

How to Use

For players, the themed rezzer system will be indistinguishable from a standalone game. Players can simply sit on the furniture that comprises the themed game rezzer and play the game as normal.

For game owners, all controls over the themed rezzing system (including loading and unloading games) are accessed from the Administration Menu of the rezzer.

Rezzer Administration

To access the rezzer's administrative menu, simply click and hold your mouse button down on any part of it for 2 seconds and a menu will pop up on your screen displaying current settings and providing options to change them. (In slow simulators, this may take slighter longer than 2 seconds, just hold the mouse button down until you see a menu.)

If you have a game already active on the rezzer, you may accidentally open the GAME's administrative menu instead of the REZZER's administrative menu, depending on where you clicked. This is okay! If you are in the GAME's admin menu, you can switch directly over to the REZZER's admin menu by pressing the "↙ Rezzer" button. Likewise if you open the REZZER menu by mistake, and wish to switch over to the GAME menu, you can simply press the "Game ↗" button.

Some elements of the administration menu are accessible only by the owner, while others can be accessed by anyone who is considered an administrative user, either explicitly added or implicitly through the Group Admin feature.

There are too many options to fit in a standard dialog window, so the window has been divided into pages. You can use the <<< and >>> buttons at the bottom of the admin menu to change which page of options you are currently viewing. If you don't see the option you want then it is on another page!

Owner-Only Options

Add Admin: Use this button to add a single Second Life avatar to the list of approved administrative users. This person will have most of the same control as the owner does over the rezzer AND any active games.

Rem Admin: Remove an administrative user from the rezzer and any games run by this rezzer.

Admins: See a list of current administrative users.

Update: Request the latest version of the game rezzer from the server.

Branding: Set a custom branding image to be displayed beneath games when in use. Optionally includes a custom normal and specular map.

Theme: Change texture and color options for this themed game rezzer.

Short Hold: Admin menu opens after clicking and holding for at least 2 seconds.

Long Hold: Admin menu opens after clicking and holding for at least 4 seconds.

G.Admin On: Enable Group Admin setting. This allows anyone who is in the same group as the rezzer to be considered an administrative user. This also applies to any active game on this rezzer.

G.Admin Off: Disable Group Admin setting. This also applies to any active game on this rezzer.

Administrative User Options

Games: Load or unload a game on this rezzer. If you load a game that you don't have a license for, it will appear, but it won't be playable.

Gaming.SL: Access the Gaming.SL menu.

Key: Get the rezzer's Second Life UUID, if for some reason you need it. This is NOT a Gaming.SL license key, just the SLUUID assigned to it at rez.

Volume High: Set volume to 100%. This will also apply to any active game on this rezzer.

Volume Low: Set volume to 50%. This will also apply to any active game on this rezzer.

Volume Off: Set volume to 0%. This will also apply to any active game on this rezzer.

G.Play On: Restrict non-group members from playing at this rezzer.

G.Play Off: Allow anyone to play at this rezzer, whether they are in the rezzer's group or not.

Restore On: Defaults to on. When players sit at this rezzer, they will return to the same pose they had last time they were seated.

Restore Off: Players will always start with the default pose.

Game ↗: If you have a game currently active on the rezzer, this button will open the game's administrative menu instead of the rezzer's menu.

Align: If you have a game currently active, pressing this button will cause the active game to snap back into place with the rezzer if you have accidentally moved them apart.

Theme Specifics

While many features of themed gaming rezzers are universal, some themes may have additional features or options.

Bug Fixes & Upgrades

Owners of K.R. Engineering games are entitled to free upgrades to newer versions of the game. See the Frequently Asked Questions section for your game for instructions on how to update. If a new update is available, then following the updating instructions for your game will result in a new copy of the most recent version being sent to you by the update server. This process is not automatic, you must tell the game to update itself!

If you are having problems with your game, please instant message Karsten Rutledge in Second Life or send email to support@karstenrutledge.com for product support. If the problem you are having has not previously been encountered, a new game version will be released with a fix as soon as possible.

DISCLAIMER: The appearance and feature set of games are subject to revision between versions as the capabilities of Second Life change over time. Please see the detailed ChangeLog for new versions before upgrading by visiting the K.R. Engineering Support Wiki at http://wiki.karstenrutledge.com/. By continuing with the update you are agreeing to accept any and all changes that have been imposed on the updated version of the game.

Bug Bounties

If you think you've found a bug in a K.R. Engineering game, you could earn a bounty by reporting it! Follow these steps to report the bug and you could earn an L$500 gift card good towards anything at K.R. Engineering! All of the criteria below must be met before you are awarded a bounty on your bug.

The game with the bug must be a Gaming.SL compatible game (have the Gaming.SL logo present on the game itself).

If you find a bug in something other than a game, you can still report it. For example, if you find a bug in an accessory such as a scorekeeper or a prize server, you can report which game you were using it with when you encountered the bug, as long as the game you are using it with meets the above criteria.

Verify that the problem you are reporting is actually a bug. Not everything is a bug! It is at our discretion whether to award a bug bounty or not. There are some pretty common-sense things that will not earn you a bounty.

If you find a typo in the game documentation, website or the game itself, we would love to hear about it so we can correct it, but a typo is not a bug.

If the game behaves in a way that you think it should not, it is not necessarily a bug.

For example, a customer was once very cross with us because Spades progressed counter-clockwise around the table, instead of clockwise. This is not a bug, it is a design decision that you disagree with, and will not earn you a bounty.

Another example is that for a long time, Greedy Greedy did not allow four-of-a-kind plus two-of-a-kind (e.g. 222244) to count as three pairs when scoring. This was later added as an optional house rule, but it is not a bug, it was an intentional part of the scoring system.

Sometimes there are bugs that we are not able to fix because they are problems with Second Life as a whole, not with our products. One example of this is that older versions of our games sometimes display ??? in place of player names. This is a problem with Second Life giving our games bad information, not our games working incorrectly. We worked around this by reverting to old style names if we detect Second Life giving us bad information, but this is not a bug with our games.

Fundamentally, a bug is any feature that does not work as intended, rather than a feature that does not work as desired. You are always welcome to discuss how something works with us and offer suggestions for things like optional house rules, but there is no bounty for suggesting new functionality, only for reporting broken existing functionality. If you're not sure whether something is really a bug or not, feel free to report it anyway, and we'll follow up with you.

You must also tell us how you found the bug, and what it does. If we are not able to reproduce the same bug with the same results on a table of the same version, then we can't fix the bug, and you won't get credit for it. You should tell us things like:

What options were enabled on your table?

What steps did you take to get the bug to happen (e.g. "I clicked roll, and then clicked the second dice, and then I played Sweet Home Alabama on my banjo for my pet rhesus monkey, and then I clicked roll again...")

What happened, versus what you expected to happen.

If it turns out to be a new bug that we were previously unaware of, and we can reproduce it, then we will fix it and you will get a free L$500 gift card!

All of our games use common core components. For example, the script that connects the game to the Gaming.SL website is identical in all of our games. If a bug is found in this script, for example, then it is considered discovered for all games that share that identical script. You cannot report a bug as new by reporting the same bug for each game it effects, since it is the same bug and has the same effect for all of them.

How To Change Theme

K.R. Engineering games use a rezzer system to play games on-demand. These rezzer systems ARE the themes! If you want to use a different theme/rezzer, simply visit our store in Second Life or on the Second Life Marketplace and purchase another themed rezzer. Any game licenses that you already own will work on any newly purchased rezzer, you do not need to buy additional licenses to change which theme you are running them on! See the Purchasing section for links to our stores.

Player Experience

Introduction

At K.R. Engineering, we believe that playing games in Second Life is about more than just the game. It is about socializing and enjoying the game the way you like it. To that end, our game tables incorporate features that go beyond game mechanics. Once you are seated at one of our game tables, a number of options become available to customize your experience.

These options most frequently include camera and animation controls, but may also include other features that are theme specific. To access these features at any time you can click on the chair you are seated in, OR press the MENU button if a game is loaded on the theme.

Persistence

Our themes will store your custom settings on our web server, so that the next time you sit down to play on the same themed game system it will automatically restore your previous settings. Your avatar seating position, your camera settings, your last chosen animation, etc. will be saved and reloaded.

This applies to all instances of the same theme. If you sit down at a Hot Tub theme and choose a new animation, then stand up and move to a different Hot Tub theme in a different region, it will still remember your settings!

Animations

The animations available will vary from theme to theme and are shown in the menu. Press the numbered button that corresponds to the animation you wish to use.

There may be more animations than can fit on a single 'page' of the menu. Use the >>> and <<< buttons to turn pages and see more animation options.

If you are using a couples animation and your animation becomes out of sync, you can press the SYNC button to try and get them back together. This can happen because animations in Second Life are played CLIENT-SIDE and sometimes they do not start playing at the same time or speed depending on internet connection and computer hardware.

Seating Position

From the animation menu, you can press the ADJUST button to change your avatar's seating position, including scooting forward, back, up, or down. Press RESET to restore to the default seating position.

Camera View

From the animation menu, press the CAMERA button to change your camera view. There are multiple settings here with different effects.

Save Default: If you are the theme owner, you can press this button to save your current camera settings as the default that all players will start with until they change it.

Disable: Turn off control over your camera. The game will not attempt to control the position of your camera in any way.

Third: Use a third-person perspective of the game, looking over your shoulder.

Birdseye: Use a top-down perspective of the game.

Persp. On: Enabled perspective-based camera. By default, the camera always appears from the perspective of "player 1" on the game, so everyone sees the same game perspective, which is generally the most readable and functional way to view many games. However, if you turn this on then the camera will be rotated so that you're looking at the game from the position your avatar is seated at, instead of the player 1 position. If you are seated opposite of player 1, this may make the game appear "upside down."

Persp. Off: Disable perspective-based camera. When off, the game will always be viewed from the perspective of Player 1, and not your own seating location.

Zoom In: Move your camera view closer to the game.

Zoom Out: Move your camera view farther from the game.

It is important to note that your camera can be overridden at any time by you. If you decide to move your camera, the game will always let go. If you are pressing camera buttons and nothing seems to be working then your camera may have been 'taken away from' the game at some point. To fix this, simply press the ESC key on your keyboard a couple times. This will cancel any manual control over your camera that you have done and let the game control it again.

Gaming.SL Live Integration

Gaming.SL Live (also known as Gaming.SL or G.SL) is gaming platform and services system developed by K.R. Engineering and brings a variety of enhanced features to games in Second Life that are not possible with Second Life alone.

Leaderboards

Gaming.SL connected games have a grid-wide top score database that allows players to compete and have a pervasive record of their high scores. These high scores can be viewed by using a Top Scores display board in Second Life or by accessing the Top Scores page on the Gaming.SL website. Scores can be filtered down by region, specific game tables, dates, and other criteria.

In addition to recording high scores, games keep a running tally of the total number of times players have won on a game. This information can be viewed on a Top Winners display board in Second Life or by accessing the Top Winners page on the Gaming.SL website. Winners can likewise be filtered by region and other criteria to see a more specific list of winners.

On supported games, players will also be assigned a rank that compares their performance to other players who have played the same game. Players can improve this rank by playing well against other players. Rank information can be viewed on a Top Ranked display board in Second Life or by accessing the Top Ranked page on the Gaming.SL website.

Achievements

Gaming.SL includes support for Achievements in participating games, where-in you can unlock trophies by performing miraculous or mundane feats of gameplay. Achievements are awarded automatically and announced in Second Life when they are unlocked. Players can check their own achievements by visiting the Achievements page on the Gaming.SL website.

Jackpots

Gaming.SL supports the option to have ongoing recurring Jackpots where players can win cash prizes just for playing, no purchase necessary! Visit the Jackpots page on the Gaming.SL website to see the current jackpot standings, and who you need to defeat to win a prize. Prizes are based on ranking on a leaderboard that is erased during each jackpot period. Players must play during each period to be eligible to win during that period.

Licensing

Gaming.SL connected games utilize a licensing system that allows scores, ranks, winners, and other attributes to persist between rezzes of the same game, regardless of location in Second Life. This licensing system also allows games to have COPY permissions while still offering instancing control.

Public Games

Games that use Gaming.SL Live can also optionally be specified as a PUBLIC game by the game's owner. This will display the game on the Gaming.SL Live Games page, including game status, options, and location, and a button to let a user teleport straight to the game to play. All games default to PRIVATE unless explicitly changed by the owner of the game.

Privacy

See the Gaming.SL Live page for more details on the Gaming.SL Live system as well as our comprehensive Privacy Policy detailing the information we collect and how we use it.

Administration

To access the game's administrative menu, simply click and hold your mouse button down on any part of it for 2 seconds and a menu will pop up on your screen displaying current settings and providing options to change them. (In slow simulators, this may take slighter longer than 2 seconds, just hold the mouse button down until you see a menu.)

It's likely that you may accidentally open the THEME/REZZER's administrative menu instead of the GAME's administrative menu, depending on where you clicked. This is okay! If you are in the THEME/REZZER's admin menu, you can switch directly over to the GAME's admin menu by pressing the "Game ↗" button. Likewise if you open the GAME menu by mistake, and wish to switch over to the THEME/REZZER menu, you can simply press the "↙ Rezzer" button.

Some elements of the administration menu are accessible only by the owner, while others can be accessed by anyone who is considered an administrative user, either explicitly added or implicitly through the Group Admin feature.

There are too many options to fit in a standard dialog window, so the window has been divided into pages. You can use the <<< and >>> buttons at the bottom of the admin menu to change which page of options you are currently viewing. If you don't see the option you want then it is on another page!

Rezzer Options

Many options that were formerly in the game admin menu have been moved to the rezzer admin menu! These are options that are game-independent, such as admin users, branding, sound volume, and updating. These options are now set on the rezzer/theme and apply automatically to whatever game is being played on that rezzer. For details on accessing the rezzer admin menu and what options are in it, please see the Game Rezzer System section.

Owner-Only Options

Indicators: A menu for changing the color of the turn indicator lights on the game board.

Color: An alternate way to access the color/theme menu for the table. This is the same as pressing the Color button on the table top.

Cards: Access the card customization menu. See the 'CUSTOM CARDS' section below for more information.

Administrative User Options

↙ Rezzer: This button will directly open the rezzer's administrative menu instead of the game's menu.

Players: Access the player management menu to skip or evict players from the game.

Abandoned: Select this button to change the number of seconds the table waits to reset an abandoned game after all players have left.

Timeout: Select this button to change the number of seconds the table waits for idle players to begin their turn. If they don't roll before the timeout occurs, the game will skip them for this round.

Quiet: Enable quiet mode, reducing the amount of chatter that the game will send to local chat.

Chatty: Disable quiet mode.

Match On: Enable card matching house rule. See the Card Matching Rule section for more info.

Match Off: Disables card matching house rule.

Auto On: Enable automatic dealing of face up cards.

Auto Off: Allow players to choose their own face up cards.

Burning On: Burn the discard pile if 4-of-a-kind are played. Same as playing a 10 trump.

Burning Off: Discard pile can only be closed by playing a 10 trump.

Custom Cards

Click image to download full size card set template.

Click image to download full size card back template.

K.R. Engineering card games that use a standard playing card deck (and some that use non-standard decks) will allow you to change the cards to be anything that you want if you're willing to make your own textures for them. This section of the wiki assumes that you are making a standard card deck, but it works the same for non-standard card decks as well, just with different suits/card colors.

To create your own unique and custom card themes, first you must create and upload the textures for them. This will require that you have some knowledge of Photoshop, GIMP, or other graphics program outside of Second Life.

The card textures for each suit should be a 4x4 grid, where the top row is (from left to right) Ace, Two, Three, Four. The second row is Five, Six, Seven, Eight. The third row is Nine, Ten, Jack, Queen. The fourth row is King, Joker, (unused), (unused). See table below.

A

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

J

Q

K

*

The * represents the Joker. Not all games will use a Joker card, but it is a good idea to include it in your deck in case you want to use it on a game in the future that needs it.

To proceed, you you should have one:

A 4x4 texture of Hearts suit cards.

A 4x4 texture of Spades suit cards.

A 4x4 texture of Diamonds suit cards.

A 4x4 texture of Clubs suit cards.

A 1x1 texture of the back of the cards.

Once you have all of these textures created and uploaded into Second Life, you can load them into your game by accessing the Cards menu. The Cards menu is accessed by pressing the Cards button in your game's Administration menu. See the Administration section for more information if you are not familiar with changing the settings on your game.

In the Cards menu, you will click Custom to load your custom textures. You will be prompted to enter the UUIDs of your textures in your chat window. You must be near the game for this to work, as chat only works at a limited distance.

To get the UUIDs of textures you have uploaded, simply find them in your Second Life inventory window, right-click on the texture, and choose "Copy Asset UUID." This will copy the texture's 36-character unique UUID to your computer's clipboard, allowing you to then paste it into the chat box or other text editor.

The game will require that you enter the card textures in a specific order, separated by colons (:) and for games that use a standard card deck this will be a consistent order across games. Games that do not use a standard card deck may have different requirements, and you should pay attention to what the game asks for in your chat window when you click the Custom button.

Once you enter your texture UUIDs, the game will begin using your card deck immediately. If you shut down your game and load it again later, it will remember this custom card deck and continue using it.

If you wish to only customize the card back on your game, you can also do this. Just chat only card back UUID when you press custom, and it will replace the card back on whatever deck you are currently using, while keeping all the suit cards the same.

Addons: Cards

K.R. Engineering games support addons. Addons do not require updating the table, you merely buy the new addon and then install it into your game and you can instantly use it.

Playing card addons are available for the following games:

Euchre

Spades

Hearts

Shalosh

Poker

IMPORTANT

Addons are NOT OBJECTS. You will only receive a notecard containing the information on this page when purchasing an addon. When you purchase addon it is entered automatically into our database and becomes instantly available to any compatible games you have. Simply follow the installation instructions below.

Compatibility

Addon theme support requires a recent version of your game that supports Gaming.SL. If you do not see a Gaming.SL logo on your game, then buying an addon will not work for you.

Usability

Addons only have to be purchased once to work with all compatible games. If you have two or more Gaming.SL enabled games from K.R. Engineering that both support addons, then you only have to buy an addon once and it will install onto both games.

Installation

After purchasing a playing card addon set from the K.R. Engineering store, you can install it onto any compatible table by touching the Gaming.SL logo and selecting the "G.SL Sync" button.

The game will do this automatically every time it is rezzed, as well.

The table will inform you that it has installed new addons after syncing if it has not already installed them before.

Now simply access your Cards menu (available through the Admin Menu on your game) and select the playing card set you wish to use.

Branding

K.R. Engineering games allow you to put your own image or logo on your game systems. This custom image will appear on the game playing surface (the octagon that has the game elements on it, such as dice, cards, game boards, etc). Your image may be partially obscured by the game pieces, and how much is visible will vary depending on which game is being played.

By default, this game area is controlled by the theme system and can appear differently depending on which theme you are using. There may be options to customize the game area from within the THEME menu as well. To override the theme and supply your own image instead, you will need to use the BRANDING button within the rezzer's admin menu. For information on using the admin menu, please see the Game Rezzer System section.

After pressing the BRANDING button, you will be prompted to supply a texture UUID by speaking it on your chat channel. You must be near the game for this to work. UUIDs can be obtained from any texture or snapshot in your inventory that you have full permissions on (a texture that you uploaded, or a snapshot that you took, for example). Simply right-click on the texture and choose "Copy Asset UUID." This will copy the texture's UUID to your computer's clipboard, and you can paste it your Second Life chat box.

Advanced Branding

In addition to supplying your own texture, you can also supply your own normal map and specular map if you wish. To do this, simply chat all three at once, separated by the pipe (|) character. For example:

TEXTURE_UUID|NORMAL_MAP_UUID|SPECULAR_MAP_UUID

All three textures will have repeats of 1x1 with no offsets. There are also some optional extra parameters you can include along with each UUID by separating them with semi-colons (;).

Colors are expressed in the form of a vector of <R, G, B> including the angle brackets (< and >). R, G, and B are values between 0.0 (0%) and 1.0 (100%).

Leaderboards

K.R. Engineering games that are connected to Gaming.SL Live and have a scoring system as part of their normal gameplay will have Top Scores leaderboards included with them. All games will have Top Winners leaderboards included even if they have no scoring mechanic, as these simply show the number of games won. There may also be Top Ranked leaderboards on some games that shows the best ranked players for a particular game.

These devices allow you to view the top leaderboards for the game with varying levels of resolution.

External API

All of the types of Leaderboards default to having their External API disabled. If you turn this on, the leaderboards will use extra sim resources, but there are some cool benefits.

Leaderboards will auto-refresh themselves after a game ends with the External API turned on, otherwise they will refresh at set intervals throughout the day.

With External API turned on, leaderboards can optionally auto-switch between the game they are showing based on what your game rezzer is doing. If you have a game rezzer in the region, AND you have External API enabled on your leaderboard, AND the leaderboard is unlocked, AND the leaderboard is not showing scores only for a specific license, then the leaderboard will switch games automatically when the rezzer loads a new game. If you are playing Greedy, the leaderboards will show Greedy scores/ranks/wins. If you then unload Greedy and load Simopolis instead, the boards will switch to showing Simopolis scores/ranks/wins.

Top Scores

Click to download high-res template.

Top Scores boards display the current top scores for the game. Depending on the game, this may either be the lowest scores (e.g. Aught) or highest scores (e.g. Greedy Greedy).

Top Scores boards come in a "low prim" and "high prim" design. They both have exactly the same features, but the low-prim design displays information as floating text. The high-prim design displays information as letters on a prim face.

You can touch either version for an option/admin menu. This menu is only available to the owner of the Top Scores board.

Top Scores Option Menu

Cancel: This button does nothing except close the menu.

Help: The leaderboard will give you a notecard full of helpful information about itself.

Refresh: The leaderboards will refresh the information they show every 12 hours, or immediately when a nearby game is completed if ExtAPI is enabled. Using this button, you can force a refresh immediately, whenever you want.

Change: Change the game type that the leaderboard is showing. This lets you switch between, for example, Greedy Greedy and Simopolis.

Lock: Prevent the leaderboard from automatically changing game types when rezzers in the region load a new game.

Unlock: Allow the leaderboard to automatically changing game types when rezzers in the region load a new game.

ExtAPI ON: Enable the leaderboard to listen to API calls from nearby games. This defaults to OFF to reduce sim resource usage (listeners). ExtAPI will also neeed to be enabled on the game for this to work.

Reset: This will reset all information on the leaderboard. (In practice, at least. What this actually does is causes the leaderboard to only show games finished after the time you reset it.)

Parcel Only: This will narrow the information on the leaderboard to only showing games that were completed on the same parcel that the leaderboard occupies. It is based off of the parcel's UUID, so even if the parcel name changes it should still load the correct scores. If you chop up a parcel then the parcel UUID may change.

Regional: This will set the leaderboard to show information on all games completed in the same region as the leaderboard, regardless of parcel lines.

Unique OFF: By default, the leaderboard will only show one entry per player, their highest score.

Unique ON: This will make the leaderboard show the "true" top scores for a game, which may include the same player more than once if they occupy multiple slots.

Solo OFF: Tells the leaderboard to ignore games where only 1 player was playing when it was completed.

Solo ON: Tells the leaderboard to show all games, even if only a single player was playing when they were completed.

Brand: Although the leaderboards are modifiable, many people are not comfortable with editing prims. This option allows them to place a logo or other graphic on the leaderboard without having to use the prim editor interface.

One Game: This option allows you to focus the leaderboard on a specific game license, rather than showing scores for a region or parcel. To use this feature, you will need to provide the leaderboard with the Gaming.SL License ID for the game you wish it to track. This is separate from the game's UUID or "key." The key for your table can be found by pressing the "Key" button in the admin menu, but this is not what the leaderboard needs. UUIDs (or Keys) in Second Life change every time you rez the table, which makes it unusable for tracking information about a specific game. Instead, the game is given a permanent and unique ID by Gaming.SL that stays the same between each rez. To find this permanent ID, you can touch the Gaming.SL logo on the table, and choose the "G.SL Info" button. Using the One Game feature will automatically lock the leaderboard from changing game types.

All Games: This reverts the leaderboard back to showing information for all games on the parcel/region.

One Rezzer: This option allows you to specify a specific rezzer (or "game system") that the leaderboard will listen to for the purposes of changing the game it is displaying.

All Rezzers: Clear the "One Rezzer" option.

Top Winners

Click to download high-res template.

Top Winners boards display the current top wins for the game. Unlike top scores, these are not specific high scores, but rather cumulative number of wins. In other words, who has won the most number of games.

Top Winners boards come in a "low prim" and "high prim" design. They both have exactly the same features, but the low-prim design displays information as floating text. The high-prim design displays information as letters on a prim face.

You can touch either version for an option/admin menu. This menu is only available to the owner of the Top Winners board.

Top Winners Option Menu

Cancel: This button does nothing except close the menu.

Help: The leaderboard will give you a notecard full of helpful information about itself.

Refresh: The leaderboards will refresh the information they show every 12 hours, or immediately when a nearby game is completed if ExtAPI is enabled. Using this button, you can force a refresh immediately, whenever you want.

Change: Change the game type that the leaderboard is showing. This lets you switch between, for example, Greedy Greedy and Simopolis.

Lock: Prevent the leaderboard from automatically changing game types when rezzers in the region load a new game.

Unlock: Allow the leaderboard to automatically changing game types when rezzers in the region load a new game.

ExtAPI ON: Enable the leaderboard to listen to API calls from nearby games. This defaults to OFF to reduce sim resource usage (listeners). ExtAPI will also neeed to be enabled on the game for this to work.

Parcel Only: This will narrow the information on the leaderboard to only showing games that were completed on the same parcel that the leaderboard occupies. It is based off of the parcel's UUID, so even if the parcel name changes it should still load the correct scores. If you chop up a parcel then the parcel UUID may change.

Regional: This will set the leaderboard to show information on all games completed in the same region as the leaderboard, regardless of parcel lines.

Solo OFF: Tells the leaderboard to ignore games where only 1 player was playing when it was completed.

Solo ON: Tells the leaderboard to show all games, even if only a single player was playing when they were completed.

Brand: Although the leaderboards are modifiable, many people are not comfortable with editing prims. This option allows them to place a logo or other graphic on the leaderboard without having to use the prim editor interface.

One Game: This option allows you to focus the leaderboard on a specific game license, rather than showing scores for a region or parcel. To use this feature, you will need to provide the leaderboard with the Gaming.SL License ID for the game you wish it to track. This is separate from the game's UUID or "key." The key for your table can be found by pressing the "Key" button in the admin menu, but this is not what the leaderboard needs. UUIDs (or Keys) in Second Life change every time you rez the table, which makes it unusable for tracking information about a specific game. Instead, the game is given a permanent and unique ID by Gaming.SL that stays the same between each rez. To find this permanent ID, you can touch the Gaming.SL logo on the table, and choose the "G.SL Info" button. Using the One Game feature will automatically lock the leaderboard from changing game types.

All Games: This reverts the leaderboard back to showing information for all games on the parcel/region.

One Rezzer: This option allows you to specify a specific rezzer (or "game system") that the leaderboard will listen to for the purposes of changing the game it is displaying.

All Rezzers: Clear the "One Rezzer" option.

Top Ranked

Click to download high-res template.

Top Ranked boards display the current top ranked players for the game. Top Ranked players are players who are consistently playing the game at the highest level of difficulty against opponents who are similarly skilled.

Top Ranked boards come in a "low prim" and "high prim" design. They both have exactly the same features, but the low-prim design displays information as floating text. The high-prim design displays information as letters on a prim face.

You can touch either version for an option/admin menu. This menu is only available to the owner of the Top Ranked board.

Top Ranked Option Menu

Cancel: This button does nothing except close the menu.

Help: The leaderboard will give you a notecard full of helpful information about itself.

Refresh: The leaderboards will refresh the information they show every 12 hours, or immediately when a nearby game is completed if ExtAPI is enabled. Using this button, you can force a refresh immediately, whenever you want.

Change: Change the game type that the leaderboard is showing. This lets you switch between, for example, Greedy Greedy and Simopolis.

Lock: Prevent the leaderboard from automatically changing game types when rezzers in the region load a new game.

Unlock: Allow the leaderboard to automatically changing game types when rezzers in the region load a new game.

ExtAPI ON: Enable the leaderboard to listen to API calls from nearby games. This defaults to OFF to reduce sim resource usage (listeners). ExtAPI will also neeed to be enabled on the game for this to work.

Parcel Only: This will narrow the information on the leaderboard to only showing games that were completed on the same parcel that the leaderboard occupies. It is based off of the parcel's UUID, so even if the parcel name changes it should still load the correct scores. If you chop up a parcel then the parcel UUID may change.

Regional: This will set the leaderboard to show information on all games completed in the same region as the leaderboard, regardless of parcel lines.

Brand: Although the leaderboards are modifiable, many people are not comfortable with editing prims. This option allows them to place a logo or other graphic on the leaderboard without having to use the prim editor interface.

One Game: This option allows you to focus the leaderboard on a specific game license, rather than showing scores for a region or parcel. To use this feature, you will need to provide the leaderboard with the Gaming.SL License ID for the game you wish it to track. This is separate from the game's UUID or "key." The key for your table can be found by pressing the "Key" button in the admin menu, but this is not what the leaderboard needs. UUIDs (or Keys) in Second Life change every time you rez the table, which makes it unusable for tracking information about a specific game. Instead, the game is given a permanent and unique ID by Gaming.SL that stays the same between each rez. To find this permanent ID, you can touch the Gaming.SL logo on the table, and choose the "G.SL Info" button. Using the One Game feature will automatically lock the leaderboard from changing game types.

All Games: This reverts the leaderboard back to showing information for all games on the parcel/region.

One Rezzer: This option allows you to specify a specific rezzer (or "game system") that the leaderboard will listen to for the purposes of changing the game it is displaying.

All Rezzers: Clear the "One Rezzer" option.

Prizes

As of September 1st, 2014, it is a violation of the Second Life Terms of Service for this game to have betting or buy-in options. As a result, K.R. Engineering games do not accept or facilitate any Linden Dollar money transactions.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Shalosh

Do you offer upgrades on my version of Shalosh?

Yes, upgrades are available for ALL versions.

How do I get my table upgraded?

If your table is v2.0.0 or later, you cannot update the game directly! Instead, you should update any themes that you own. Updated themes include the latest version of all games supported by that theme.

Click and hold your mouse button on part of the theme for 3 seconds until a menu appears, click 'Update.'

If you don't see the "Update" button, try pressing the <<< button until you see it. The admin menu has multiple pages.

If you cannot find an "Update" button, you may have opened the GAME's admin menu instead of the THEME's Admin menu. You can switch between these with the "Game ?" and "? Rezzer" buttons.

A new, updated theme should be sent to you from our update servers within a few minutes. If it's not, please try again. If you are unable to get an update, please contact us for assistance.

If your table is older than v2.0.0, click and hold your mouse button on part of the table for 3 seconds until a menu appears, click 'Update.'

If you don't see the "Update" button, try pressing the <<< button until you see it. The admin menu has multiple pages.

Your table will disappear (delete itself) and you will receive a new table. Delivery of new table may take up to 5 minutes.

General

Will you bring your games over to InWorldz/other OpenSim-based grids?

Short answer: Not for the foreseeable future, no.

Longer multi-part answer:

Most money made in Second Life comes from volume sales, it's the reason you can buy a shirt for L$200, which is the equivalent of $0.80 USD. They're called micro-transactions because despite the big numbers we throw around in Second Life (ooh, "thousands"), they're really, really tiny amounts. My games range between L$295 and L$1995, that's about $1.18 to $8.00 USD, or what you'd expect to pay for a good phone/tablet app on iPhone or Android these days. This works because like Android/iPhone app developers, Second Life developers hope to sell not merely hundreds, but thousands of copies of whatever they make, otherwise it simply is not worthwhile. This means to make developing worthwhile, you need to have a large market to sell to, because if you're lucky, 1 in 100 people will buy your product. If there's 1000 people, you might sell 10. If there's 10,000 people, you might sell 100, if there's 100,000 people, maybe you'll break the 1000 barrier. It's simple economics. Not everyone is interested in everything, so not everyone is going to buy your product. The biggest problem with InWorldz (and other even smaller grids) is that it is VERY, VERY SMALL. As of this writing, there are 2000x fewer people connected to it than Second Life. That means you can roughly expect to sell 2000x fewer of your product on InWorldz than Second Life. In order for that to be worthwhile, you'd have to sell it for 2000x the cost, but nobody would buy it for 2000x the cost. That would make Greedy Greedy $16,000 USD on InWorldz. If it were as simple as picking up my games, walking over to InWorldz and rezzing them, I might consider it, but there is a considerable time and resource investment into bringing a product like my games over to another grid, and all indications say "You will never make that money back." It's simply more worthwhile for me to develop new products for Second Life than to port old ones to a nearly empty grid.

Some people might argue that this is a chicken and egg problem, or more succinctly, "if you build it, they will come." InWorldz is small because of lack of content, but it has a lack of content because it is small, it's a vicious cycle! That may be true, but unfortunately doesn't change economics. I've logged into InWorldz periodically over the last few years (my name is Karsten Rutledge there also) and what I see is not a world suffering from lack of content, it's a world suffering from a poor business plan. InWorldz looks like Second Life from 4 years ago, and performs even worse. The ONLY reason anybody at all is on InWorldz is because they offered super cheap regions compared to Second Life, and then on top of that, offered 45,000 prims per region instead of 15,000. Sounds too good to be true! That's because it is.

Second Life regions aren't limited to 15,000 prims out of spite, they're limited that way in an effort to offer both resources and performance at a balance. This doesn't always work because people who use the regions don't understand region performance is a finite resource, but you know what works even less? Tripling the load on the regions. This doesn't just triple the load on the regions, it also triples the load on all of the viewers trying to look at that region. Instead of having to download 15,000 prims from the internet, your computer now has to download 45,000 prims from the internet, and your computer has to render those 45,000 prims on your screen. Sounds good on paper, in practice, people who run Second Life slowly run InWorldz EVEN SLOWER, if they can run it at all.

This 'super cheap gimmicky regions' philosophy has led to one readily foreseeable and obvious result: It's a wasteland. While I'm writing this, there are enough people connected to have 1 person for every 6 sims. Vast expanses of land with nobody in them.

OpenSim is a remarkable effort, but it never was up to the performance of Second Life and probably never will be. I've been standing in a nearly empty InWorldz sim just waiting for a single airplane to fully rez, and half an hour later, it still hasn't, it's just a distorted cluster of half-rezzed sculpts. This happens in every region I go to. InWorldz simply can't deliver what it promises.

(Update) I'm told InWorldz has Mesh now, at least in beta. Which just further illustrates that InWorldz is just treading water to keep up with Second Life, it's not offering anything new or innovative. Second Life has had mesh for years, and InWorldz is just now getting around to catching up.

Scripting support lags behind. For something like skins, this hardly matters, but if Second Life adds a new LSL function and InWorldz doesn't, your scripted content probably doesn't work on InWorldz anymore.

If you think 'copybotting' is a problem in Second Life, wait until you see OpenSims. The 'open' being the key part. Once you upload your content to an OpenSim grid, it's now "in the wild" so to speak. The one last bastion of security in Second Life is that scripts are still not accessible to copybots. If you're a skin designer, your skin is no more at risk on an OpenSim than it is in Second Life, to see a skin or other texture your computer has to download it (although new server-side avatar baking is making this much harder, thankfully, something else I believe InWorldz/OpenSim doesn't do, meaning your skins are now less safe in OpenSim than Second Life), so you are essentially passing out copies to anyone who even sees an avatar wearing your skin, much less buying it. You only see the EFFECTS of scripts though, not the scripts themselves. Therefore porting scripted content to an OpenSim grid carries a huge additional risk, because now you are making your scripts available to a much wider group of people, namely whoever has administrative access to that OpenSim grid.

All in all, I believe competition for Second Life is healthy and good, but InWorldz and other OpenSim grids aren't competition, they're poorly made ripoffs trying to lure people in with cheap gimmicks, and that's probably all they will ever be. If one of them manages to achieve any significant market size or, shockingly, innovates on Virtual Worlds somehow, I'll probably be keenly interested. Until then, it's not worth the time or effort.

I (or someone else) does not appear on scorekeepers or gamekeepers, or on the Gaming.SL website!

This is because you (or they) specifically requested NOT to appear on scoreboards. You did this by touching the Gaming.SL logo on a game table and selecting the 'Opt Out' button. See the Gaming.SL page for more details about this. You can fix this by touching the Gaming.SL logo on a game table, and pressing the 'Opt Out' button AGAIN.

On newer game tables, this button is marked as "Opt Out|In" and spawns a warning dialog box asking ARE YOU SURE you want to do this. On older tables, it will simply tell you in local chat what it is you have done after you click on it.

NOTE: Opting out also prevents you from earning achievements and participating in grid-wide jackpots.

Are you going to convert your games into mesh?

Yes, they are mesh now as of July 2018. If you have an older non-mesh game table, you can convert it to the new Mesh system by visiting our store in Second Life and using the MIGRATE sign on the wall.

I saw a game table I want to buy, but it looks different from the ones in the store. Where is the other one?

Our tables come with 2 basic themes or "skins" they can use. A wooden classic octagon table and a post-modern futuristic shiny table. Newer tables also can have new themes added on to them after purchase by visiting the theme showcase in our store. New themes are released regularly and cover a wide range of styles and genres. After buying the table, you can change which theme is in use at any time.

For newer games, that is games that show the Gaming.SL logo on the table top, this can be done by accessing the Color/Appearance menu on the table and choosing the Switch option.

For older games, this can be done by pressing the New Style or Old Style buttons in the game's Admin Menu.

My game has been updating for a long time, it says to contact you if it persists, what do I do?

This happens to very old games when the Second Life network is losing packets under a heavy load. Send the game to Karsten Rutledge in a folder with your name on the folder.

Where can I find/do you have a table with multiple games on one table?

No. I would like to do something like this, but it isn't practical in SL for many reasons, including prim limits, scripting issues, security issues and permission issues.

Troubleshooting

How do I get rid of the annoying info box that pops up when I mouse over your table?

This is actually something your viewer is doing. The table cannot produce this info box and also cannot get rid of it. You can disable it in your viewer's preferences (usually labeled as "Hover Tips"), but it will disable it for all objects, not just the table. In most viewers, you can toggle this feature on or off by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+T on your keyboard.

I think my table is broken, it wants me to pay to play, but the Pay... window is completely blank!

This a bug in some very old versions of a modular script that really old tables used that will cause it to blank the pay dialog if the table is picked up and rezzed again. You should really update your table.

Why do I only see candles on the table?

On very, very old versions of the game tables you could touch the base of the table (the flat round part at the bottom) to 'hide' the game. You probably touched it by accident. Just touch it again to bring the game back. Or better yet, update it, because your table was around to see the Pharaohs.

I lost the instructions card that came with my game, can I get a replacement?

The instructions notecard is the same card you get by pressing the HELP button on the game. Simply click it for a new card.

Some of the buttons on my game don't work, what do I do?

Often this is because someone's invisible attachment is covering the button, such as shields and other things. To check, open the View menu and turn on 'Highlight Transparent.'

My game doesn't work at all, NONE of the buttons work, what do I do?

First verify that you are not in a no-scripts zone.

Next, you should verify that the table is not obstructed. Often this issue arises because there is an invisible prim over the table, frequently from nearby foliage. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard and this will activate "Highlight Transparent" mode on your viewer. Any prims that have alpha (transparent) will be turned red. Make sure there are no red prims covering the table that you are accidentally clicking on instead of the actual table. Press Ctrl+Alt+T again to turn off the highlighting.

If you're not in a no-scripts zone, then right-click on your game and choose 'Open', if there is nothing in the contents then you must have removed all the scripts from it, apparently without realizing it. There is no way to fix this, the game will have to be replaced. Send it to Karsten Rutledge in a folder with your name on it.

If there are scripts inside the game when you open it, the problem may be that the scripts got deactivated, possibly by the estate tools. You may have a jerk for a sim administrator. The game will have to be replaced if this is the case. Send it to Karsten Rutledge in a folder with your name on it.

My game paid the winner twice (or more times), and now I lost money, what do I do?

As of September 1st, 2014, gambling on K.R. Engineering tables is against the Second Life Terms of Service. You should update your table to a compliant version immediately.

More than likely, this means you have more than one Prize Server rezzed in the same region (sim). One server works for every game in the same sim, unless you tell the prize server to only listen to a single table. See the Prize Server page for more info.

My game is running very slowly, what is wrong with it?

The speed of objects in Second Life is based on the speed of the simulator they are rezzed in. If the simulator is running very slowly, which happens when it is overloaded, then everything in the sim will also run slowly. Void/Homestead/Openspace sims are always going to be much slower than full simulators even if they are relatively empty.

My game got deeded to a group, and now I can't do anything with it, what do I do?

Presumably, since the table got deeded to the group that means you are either a group officer or a group owner. As such, you can simply set the table for sale for 0L and buy it back from the group. To do this:

Right-click on the table and choose 'Edit...'

If you have not used the building interface before, you may need to click the 'More' button to expand the window.

Go to the 'General' tab on the left of the window and check "For Sale."

Be sure to set the price next to this to 0.

Below the For Sale box it should say 'Original', 'Copy' and 'Contents', make sure that Original is the button that is marked.

Now right-click on the table again and choose 'Buy.' The table will still remain rezzed, but you should now be the owner again.

Your game has texture fighting problems on the table, can you fix this?

Unfortunately, no. If you are seeing texture fighting (usually the black backboard and the wooden game table surface are most commonly noticeable), then you are probably at a really high altitude, such as greater than 1000 meters up. This happens because of rounding errors (such as 1.06 getting rounded to 1.0, loss of precision) in the math that the Second Life viewer does when calculating where to display each part of the game. The math gets less and less accurate the higher up you go. Before a couple years ago, we were limited to building up to 768m high for that reason, they only recently raised the cap to 4096m, but the problem is still there. For some things it doesn't matter, like nobody cares if their couch cushions aren't quite where they should be, but in the case of the games, the black backboard and the wooden table surface are both parallel and fairly close together, so the rounding error shows up on it in a big way. At that altitude, Second Life thinks that prims that were separated by a small amount are no longer separated at all, and draws them in the exact same position even though they are not. The only solution is to use the table at a lower altitude, generally less than 1000 meters, although your mileage may vary depending on your graphics settings. You can see this for yourself if you move the table down to lower altitudes. At ground level you will see the table most correctly, but the flickering will stop well before then. The only way I could "fix" this issue is by separating all the game elements much farther away from the table surface, but this would cause the game to look strange at normal altitudes instead of looking strange at high altitudes, a trade-off that's not really practical or desirable.

Whenever I brand my table, some or all of the dice disappear, what am I doing wrong?

This happens whenever you use a texture that has an alpha layer (transparency) on the backboard. The dice are partially transparent, so you end up with the well-known issue of "texture fighting" on your board, where the viewer isn't sure whether to display the dice on top or the backboard on top. Even if your texture does not have any visible areas that are transparent, it can still have an alpha layer. If you are the original creator of the texture, try uploading it again without an alpha layer. The easiest way to do this is to save it as a .jpg (Jpeg) or a .bmp (Bitmap) file before upload. .png (Portable Network Graphics) will also work, as long as you know how to save it specifically as a 24-bit .png file (minus the 8-bit alpha layer that a 32-bit .png file has).

Since I upgraded my table, I can't choose specific seats to sit at anymore, why?

You still can, actually. Newer tables have a new theme system that allows them to have cushions on the seats, but the cushions are not part of the seats, so if you try to sit on the cushions it is no different than trying to sit on the table itself. In these cases, Second Life will simply seat you at the next available seat in order. To choose a specific seat, try right-clicking on the chair back instead of the chair seat and choosing Play. Some themes may drastically alter the shape of the chairs, but you can always still choose a specific seat by right-clicking the correct prim.

Modifying

Will you create a custom game for me/my business?

At this time we do not offer custom games. The tables have the ability to change their centerboard texture if you wish to brand them for your establishment or replace with a picture, etc.

Additionally, newer game tables have the ability to add entire new themes to them. We do not do custom themes, but we do take suggestions for future themes you would like to see available as options.

Perhaps most importantly, adding any amount of customization to a game, be it aesthetic or functional changes, automatically terminates the update path for that game. The updater will not be able to send you newer versions of your specifically customized game in the future, thus cutting you off from bug fixes and new features.

This game is a lot of prims, will you tweak it for me to be less prims?

This falls under custom games also, and likewise, no. I do my best to create games with as few prims as possible. If I could reasonably reduce the prim count further I would have already done it.

Can I buy a copyable version of your games?

No, sorry, I do not sell copyable games.

Can I buy a modifiable version of your games?

Likewise, no, I do not sell modifiable games. The reason is because any game that is modifiable opens it up to potential abuse by the owner of the table, including manipulating the outcome of the game by inserting extra scripts into the game contents. This is bad both for my business and for anyone who owns one or more of my games. If even the possibility of a game table being rigged exists, then it damages the credibility of every one of my games in Second Life. If a dispute arises, I can say "No, the game tables can not be rigged by unscrupulous hosts." because it is true. I need that deniability and so does every honest game host on the grid. It is important that people trust the outcome of a game to be fair and based only on legitimate game actions.

Can I put your games into a temp-rezzing system?

No, for two reasons. A temp-rezzer works by deleting and re-rezzing the object every 1 to 2 minutes. On top of being incredibly hard on the simulator (causes a LOT of lag), this means that everyone playing the game would be evicted and the game 'reset' every 1 to 2 minutes. Makes for a very unplayable game. The other reason is that the games are no-copy/transfer, and they would have to be copy/no-transfer for this to be doable.

Can your games be put into a rezzing system of any kind?

No. Again, the games would have to be copy/no-transfer for this to work.

Money

Can I gamble on this game?

No, you cannot. Gambling is currently a violation of the Second Life terms of service. Please see the Skill Gaming page for more information.

If you have an older game, it may have the option to gamble on it, but you absolutely should not. You should, in fact, update your table immediately, as you can get in trouble for having a game with payout options, even if you don't use them. See the Skill Gaming page for more information.

I only want to play the game with my friends, we don't want to have to pay it, can I do that?

Yes, in fact, this is the only way you can play it. It is a violation of the Second Life terms of service to play a game that has betting options on it, even if you don't use those options. See the Skill Gaming page for more information.

Why is my game asking to take money from me? Is it trying to steal my money? I don't understand!

If your game is doing this, you should update it immediately! Please see the Skill Gaming page for more information.

If you have an old table, debit permissions are needed for the Pay-to-Play feature to work correctly. This is because Pay-to-Play is basically a vendor, a vendor that sells a service (playing the game) rather than a product. All games in Second Life that can be bet on work this way, because it is the only option. Objects can not hold money, so money paid to a game goes to its owner instead. In order for the game to pay back to the winner, it must have permission to take the money out of the owner's account. You can safely deny this if you are feeling particularly paranoid about it. It will not break the game, it will only prevent the Pay-to-Play feature from working, which is not an issue if you intend the game to be free-to-play anyway. If you accept the debit permissions, it will never pay out more money than was taken in during a game, so you cannot lose money by enabling it.

Purchases & Replacements

My object got returned, and now it is gone, it never came back! Can I get a replacement?

Your object is probably not actually lost, just hidden! This is a feature of Second Life. When more than one object gets returned from a parcel at the same time, then Second Life does not send them back to your inventory as individual objects. Instead, it will bundle them all together into a single package. This package/bundle will appear in your Lost and Found folder as one inventory item, even if there are 5, 10 or 100 objects actually inside of it. The bundle/package will only show the name of the FIRST item in the bundle while it is in your inventory. To see what else is inside this bundle you will have to rez it. We recommend finding a sandbox to do this in to be sure that there are enough prims available for whatever happens to be inside the bundle. Some additional things to look out for:

Because bundles only show the name of the FIRST item in the bundle and nothing else, this means that the inventory search bar at the top of your inventory window will not help you, as it cannot search inside of bundles.

Bundles should have a different icon next to them than single objects do. This is often represented as a stack of smaller boxes, rather than a single large box.

If you can't find your missing objects, you should try clearing your inventory cache in your viewer preferences. This is usually under the "Network & Files" or "Network & Cache" tabs in most viewers. Look for the "Clear Inventory Cache" button, not the standard "Clear Cache" button as that only clears texture caches. You will have to close and restart Second Life after clearing your inventory cache.

Returned objects NEVER go back to their creator, they only go back to their OWNER. This is a false rumor. Second Life simply does not work that way, nor has it ever.

As a general rule, you should never return anything that you want to keep. Return is for taking out the trash, it's like a bulldozer clearing a lot for new construction. It is not a tool of finesse, and is known to eat objects. Always remember to properly TAKE things that you care about, and only RETURN if you have other copies of the object or don't care if you lose it.

If following the above advice does not allow you to find your missing object, you can contact us to ask for a replacement. In most cases we will be able to provide a replacement as long as your table was purchased from us originally. If you bought your object used from a third-party reseller, we may have no record of it.

I found someone reselling your products, is that allowed?

I do not have a reseller program at this time. However, many of my products are transferable and this allows anyone to resell that game to someone else, much as you would at a garage sale or flea market. Unfortunately, often times these tables are counterfeit and I cannot guarantee the same level of support on a used table as I can on a new table. You automatically assume some risk when purchasing used. For example, if there is a failed delivery, it will be up to you to resolve it with the used reseller, I won't be able to help you since it wasn't purchased from me. Likewise, old tables that are purchased used may not be able to be updated to newer versions. There's also the possibility it is a straight up scam, and you will receive nothing for your money. I cannot guarantee the legitimacy of "used" products that are sold by a third party, as I have no affiliation with them. Buyer beware.

My object is missing and I don't know what happened to it. Can I get a replacement?

First, you should verify that the item is actually missing! This seems obvious, but sometimes people look in the wrong places. Here are some common mistakes people make when looking for lost items:

If you are using the inventory search bar at the top of your inventory window, make sure you are searching by the product name and not the brand name. For example, if you're trying to find your Greedy table, make sure you search for Greedy, do not search for any variation of K.R. Engineering, because the brand name is not in the name. The objects are named "Greedy Greedy Table v2.75" and NOT "K.R. Engineering Greedy Greedy Table v2.75" so they will not show up when searching for brand.

Do not rely on the "Recent" tab in your inventory window, as this will often not show items that you expect to be 'recent', such as newly purchased items. To verify your object is actually missing, always go to correct folder in your main "Inventory" tab.

Verify that you are not looking in an old folder or box. Each time you update your Greedy game, for example, you will have a new folder with a new game in it, and if you haven't deleted your old folders (from before the update) then you may find yourself having multiple folders all called "K.R. Engineering Greedy Greedy (boxed)."

When an object actually goes "missing" in Second Life, the next thing you should do is clear your inventory cache. There are two versions of your inventory; the one that the server knows about and the one that your computer knows about. Sometimes these can be end up being different due to communication errors between the server and your computer, and clearing your inventory cache forces your computer to update what it thinks is in your inventory to be the same as what the server thinks is in your inventory. Very often objects will reappear after doing this, especially objects that were lost due to 'failed to rez' errors.

If you still can't find your missing object, there's a good chance that it was returned to you at some point by the owner of the land you last rezzed it on or even by Second Life itself, such as when a parcel goes over prim limits. In this case, your object should be in your Lost and Found folder and just needs to be moved back to its normal folder, BUT it may be hidden! This is a feature of Second Life, and you can read about it in our FAQ on returned objects.

If following the above advice does not allow you to find your missing object, you can contact us to ask for a replacement. In most cases we will be able to provide a replacement as long as your table was purchased from us originally. If you bought your object used from a third-party reseller, we may have no record of it.

Can I get a discount if I buy a lot of something?

Rather than a bulk discount, our vendors now offer a rewards bonus for each purchase in the form of store credit. This reward bonus can be used towards the purchase of other items in the store. To see how much store credit you currently have just touch the CREDIT sign in the store, or view the "My Credit" page on the Gaming.SL Live website.

I bought something and everything is in the folder except for the actual product!

This can actually never happen, but there are many common reasons it might APPEAR to be that way! Here some of the most common reasons:

If this is a newer version of a game you previously owned and updated, you may be looking in an old folder or box from your previous table, make sure that you don't have multiple folders/boxes and verify that you are looking in the most recent one.

If you are using the search bar at the top of your inventory window, you will need to search by the product's name, not our company name. For example if you purchased Greedy Greedy, try searching for Greedy, do not search for K.R. Engineering because the object name is "Greedy Greedy Table vx.xx", there's no "K.R. Engineering" in the name of the game table like there is in the name of other things in the folder.

Do not use the "Recent" tab on your inventory window. The ways of the Recent tab are mysterious and shadowy, it does not always show you everything that's been added to your inventory recently. Look for the folder in your normal Inventory tab.

You may have gotten the item and then subsequently misplaced it unknowingly. This is a "feature" of Second Life. It occurs whenever you attempt to rez a folder full of objects all at once in some Second Life Viewers, by dragging the folder out of your inventory instead of individual items. When this happens, Second Life interprets this as "put this folder of stuff INSIDE whatever I dropped it on." In this case, you have everything except the game/product because it is transfer-only, and everything else in the folder is copyable. Your game/product is inside whatever prim you dropped it on, probably your floor or rug, for example.

This can also occur if you press the CTRL button on your keyboard when dragging and dropping just the table by itself.

There may be other ways to do this that are not listed here, depending on the viewer you are using, but the end result is the same.

Also keep in mind, it is inside the PRIM you dropped it on, not the OBJECT you dropped it on, even if you dropped it on a prim that is in a linked object. You will probably have to enable "Edit Linked Parts" in your build window to look in individual prims, rather than whole objects.

It is possible you put the game/product inside an object that you don't own, for example if it is a group owned object or if you have modify rights on someone else's objects (such as your significant other). If this is the case, you don't own it anymore as ownership is transferred to the person who owns the object it is inside of. You may have to ask them to retrieve it for you and return it to you.

If you are unable to locate the item, or are unsure how to look for it, please let us know and we will be happy to help you look for it. If we also can't find it then we can usually replace the lost table.

Changelog

Version 1.0 [January 2010]:

Initial release.

Version 1.02 [January 2010]:

Fixed a bug where more than one seat would be trying to communicate with a player's HUD if they changed seats between games and did not stand up before the table was reset and their previous seat remained empty.

Version 1.03 [February 2010]:

Addressing some visibility issues experienced on some monitors (especially widescreen monitors), a new default card set has been added with large print and a larger HUD option is also included.

Version 1.04 [September 2010]:

Drastic script reduction and performance improvements thanks to new scripting functions added to Second Life by server version 1.38. Game now uses about half of the script time of previous versions when idle, and as much as 1/100th of the script time when in use.

Moved Branding menu to Admin Menu to avoid customer support problems. Admin menu now appears regardless of where you click and hold on the table, instead of a different menu coming up on the centerboard.

By popular demand, added an option to toggle phantom on/off on the table.

Fixed a bug that made the particle cards being dealt not show the correct card backing.

New HUD Design includes zoom feature for resizing entire HUD.

Version 1.1 [November 2013]:

Added support for addons to be installed into the game after purchase.

Old Style/New Style buttons in admin menu considered deprecated, and removed. Theme switching occurs in the color menu now as part of a brand new theme engine.

Used new Gaming.SL addon support to create installable themes for the game that are universal for all compatible tables (n/a for Pocket game) (buy a theme once, use it with all compatible tables).

Added toggle button for fullbright in branding menu.

Slightly increased the distance of the centerboard off of the table to make the games more resistant to high altitude rounding errors in drawing geometry.

Admin users can now access the administrative menu, but do not have all the options that owners do.

Added new Group Admin option, defaults to off, allowing anyone in the same group as the table to be considered admins without having to be added manually.

Updated to support the Display Names feature on newer Second Life viewers.

Game now has OPTIONAL internal prize server with buyin and betting options that give games more control over how these events occur. External prize servers are still fully functional and now receive more information than before. Internal prize server now responsible for communicating with external prize servers. External API can be enabled/disabled independently of internal prize server features.

No longer required to reset between games, displacing all the players. Once a game has ended, simply press ROLL again to start a new game with everyone seated.

Changed the "tintable" branding preset to something less hideous.

Added option to put table into Group Play mode, where only members of the same group as the table are allowed to play it. Must have group tag active to work.

New table brings prim count down from 56 to 46.

Switched Shalosh over to using Convex Hull physics, further reducing the prim count from 46 to 32 PE.

Made extensive use of the new llRegionSayTo function to reduce chat spam by directing error messages at the specific person they are intended for.

Minor modifications to the way the HUD hands unused cards to reduce some instances of alpha fighting between the cards.

Version 1.2 [August 2014]:

Color button added in Admin Menu that brings up the same menu as pressing Color on the table top.

Chairs should no longer get messed up if you rotate the table while it is in the process of changing themes.

Theme engine updated to allow themes to adjust the physics shape of individual pieces, on a per-theme basis. This may cause minor fluctuations in prim count when changing themes.

Script count reduced by 14 on the Table version, now only 15 scripts for entire game.

ALL PRIZE FUNCTIONS HAVE BEEN REMOVED to comply with the new Skill Gaming policy from Linden Lab. As a result, table no longer requests debit permissions on rez.

Changed the way games fetch addons from the server to reduce the number of HTTP requests being made, since LL is throttling them.

Added new option for themes to specify whether they are normal sitting, ground sitting or laying down themes, and added 4 new poses.

Game will now attempt to restore previous settings on new table from before an update.

Camera and poses no longer controlled by keyboard, now accessed through "POSE" button on table top. Table no longer takes over your controls at all.

New Indicators admin menu option for changing the color of the turn indicators.

Table reduced from 32 prims to 26 PE.

Version 1.21 [September 2014]:

Fixed a bug where sometimes some players would not be able to choose their face down cards.

Version 1.3 [January 2015]:

Added support for specular and normal maps to theme engine. Also includes alpha mode support.

Themes that include specular information will now use this for Shiny On/Off options in themes, instead of old style shiny.

New Theme Engine is backwards compatible with non-materials addons. Material addons are not backwards compatible with old tables.

Added the ability for table owners to save new default camera settings from the Pose/Camera menus.

Version 1.31 [May 2015]:

Fixed a bug where adding a custom card deck to the game would delete all the animations and HUD from the game's root prim. Don't ask.

SUPER EXCITING: FIXED ALPHA FIGHTING ON CARD HUD. Using a combination of a tailor cut Mesh card prim and alpha mode blending, I was able to finally solve alpha sorting glitches on the HUD.

Version 1.32 [January 2016]:

Added a "Burning" optional house rule. When enabled, playing 4-of-a-kind has the same effect as playing a 10 trump.